Waldron and Hartman, in their books Ultimate Sacrifice I and
II and Legacy of Secrecy, put forth the conspiracy theory that the Kennedys
approved a coup plot in Cuba
involving some military officers, specifically Almeida, that was supposed to
take place on Dec. 1, 1963, but the plot was hijacked by mafia dons who
redirected the plan and JFK was killed instead of Castro. While I do think that
one of the officially approved plots for a coup in Cuba
or assassination of Castro was redirected to JFK, I don’t think that whoever
engineered this operation needed the mafia to redirect their target. While the books are written in an biased attempt to support their thesis, some of the data they present
can be more accurately interpreted independently apart from their hypothesis.

One interesting aspect of their book “Legacy of Secrecy” is
the introduction of an anonymous character who identifies himself with ONI –
the Office of Naval Intelligence, and imparts certain information that they
use, which might have some real bearing on the ONI records related to the
assassination, and the possibility that ONI is still conducting deliberate,
offensive actions against targeted researchers who they know are working on
certain aspects of the case.

Legacy of Secrecy

p. 24:

“Among the Joint Chiefs, evidence indicates that only
Maxwell Taylor and DIA chief Joseph Carroll
were fully informed about Almeida. Others, like Air Force Chief Gen. Curtis
LeMay, were too hawkish and close to JFK’s conservative adversaries in Congress
to be trusted…The DIA was a newly created
umbrella organization that supposed to coordinate the activities of services
like Army Intelligence and Navy Intelligence, which later Congressional
investigations found had been involved in domestic surveillance for many
years.” 11

11. (p, 790): “While
General Carroll probably wouldn’t have appreciated knowing his conversations
were being reported to the CIA, his own
associates were engaged in similar high-level surveillance. Joseph Califano’s
recent autobiography, he points to a time in June 1963 when he and his
superiors, Army Secretary Cyrus Vance, ‘secretly ran all’ of ‘the White House
and Justice Department…communications lines through the Army war room. Sitting
there, Vance and I were able to listen to any conversation the President or
Attorney General had…Because we assumed Robert Kennedy would have objected to
our eavesdropping, we never let him know.”
Joseph Califano, Jr. Inside: A Public and Private Life (NY Public
Affairs, 2004, p. 109).

[BK Notes: Califano is a living witness to these events and works out of a non-profit foundation supported think tank at Columbia University, thought the college has stated there is no connection between them.]

p. 24 continued:

“While the CIA had been
tasked with getting more US assets into Cuba
prior to the coup, some of those assets were current or former US
military personnel who were also involved with the CIA.
At least one of them was under ‘tight surveillance’ in November 1963, as he had
been since his return form the Soviet Union in 1962. As
we first revealed in 2005, Naval Intelligence was maintaining phone, mail, and
visual surveillance of Lee Harvey Oswald and his wife. Since Naval Intelligence
lacked the resources to maintain such surveillance I many areas, they relied on
assistance from the FBI and the CIA. Our
source, who maintained reports about Oswald and other domestic surveillance
targets, sys that Oswald’s folder contained a CIA
phone number to call if he were ever involved in any problem. 12

“….Banister also had ties to Naval Intelligence through his
close friend Guy Johnson…”

p.77:

“By November 1963, Gilberto Policarpo Lopez had eighteen
parallels with Lee Harvey Oswald, according to declassified government
files…Both men had an unusual involvement with the small pro-Castro FPCC in
1963….Both men were persons of interest to Naval Intelligence in 1963….”

p.84:

“…DeMohrenschildt attended meetings between business
associates and the assistant director of Army Intelligence (part of the DIA,
as was Naval Intelligence)…”

p.87:

“As our Naval Intelligence source told us, Oswald was under
surveillance the whole time he was in Mexico City
– something later confirmed by Win Scott, who at the time was the Mexico City CIA
station chief. 21

p.139:

“…Oswald had been a Marine, and was (as Helms would later
testify to Congress) the responsibility of Defense Department agencies like
Naval Intelligence and the DIA.”

p.140:

“…Oswald was a ‘former’ Marine, and thus the responsibility
of Marine and Naval Intelligence, and General Carroll’s DIA…”

p.141:

“…Naval Intelligence (along with Marine Intelligence, G2)
had been responsible for the ‘tight surveillance’ on Oswald since his return
from Russia,
while Oswald’s operational activities appear to have involved the CIA.
That meant officials at Naval Intelligence would have to cover up as well, as
we’ll soon show.

p.157:

“Oswald under tight surveillance”

p.164-66:

“…Our confidential Naval Intelligence source – who had
helped to compile the reports resulting from the ‘tight surveillance’ of Oswald
since his return to the US
from Russia –
said that ‘on the day of the assassination,’ he and a coworker ‘were called
back to their office in Washington.’
After receiving orders from their commander, they ‘destroyed and sanitized lots
o the Oswald file.’” 41

“Confirmation for such document destruction comes from FBI
memos, which describe their own interviews with Marines who had served with
Oswald. Hover, the FBI agents discovered that some of those Naval Intelligence
reports were all missing, leading and FBI agent to say in a memo, ‘Perhaps they
have been destroyed.’” 42

“The Naval Intelligence file our source handled in the fall
of 1963 concerned only the close surveillance of Oswald, not any operational
duties Oswald might have had. Those were apparently being handled by or
coordinated with, the CIA. Our source said
there was ‘a note n the top of the file jacket [that] said to contact the CIA
if Oswald was arrested or got into any trouble. There was a name and some sort
of code given for someone at the CIA.’” 43

p. 165:

“…Naval Intelligence and its close counterpart, Marine
Intelligence (G-2), were components of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)
headed by General Joseph Carroll…”

“…Even on the day of JFK’s death, a memo shows that Naval
Intelligence considered withholding information from General Carroll. Carroll
asked to see Oswald’s Naval Intelligence file, but Naval Intelligence was
‘cautious about passing [the] file to DIA.’
Eventually, after Joint Chiefs Chairman General Maxwell Taylor had made a
request, General Carroll was allowed to look at the file, but he was not
permitted to keep a copy.”

“It’s hard to say if Naval Intelligence was initially
reluctant to share the file for bureaucratic reasons, or because by that time
it was probably already incomplete….”

P. 166:

“…it appears unlikely that General Carroll knew about the
destruction of parts of Oswald’s Naval Intelligence file….”

p.168:

“…First, the FBI had assisted Naval Intelligence with some
of it s tight surveillance of Oswald, especially in landlocked cities like Dallas,
where Naval Intelligence had few assets….”

p. 196:

“…something that not only would have been embarrassing for
the FBI, CIA and Naval Intelligence if it
were revealed, but also could expose the rather large domestic surveillance
program those agencies ran, which was technically illegal…”

p. 214:

“…We’ve noted that photos of the real Oswald in Mexico
City did exist, as verified by the CIA’s
station chief there, Win Scott, and our own Naval Intelligence source, who saw
the photos…”

p. 234:

Harry Williams says “Artime and CIA
showed him a photo of Oswald going into the Cuban Embassy in Mexico
City….

p.247:

“After Oswald’s death, Naval Intelligence’s goals changed
radically. On the afternoon of November 24, the organization transitioned from
shredding files about its ‘tight surveillance’ of Oswald to conducting its own,
secret internal investigation of JFK’s assassination. Also involved were
personnel from Marine Intelligence, and the operation was probably known to the
head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, General Joseph Carroll. Our Naval
Intelligence source participated in this secret investigation, aspects of which
were later independently confirmed by the House Select Committee on
Assassinations and by a former Navy man who was the son of a prominent
admiral.”

“Our source ‘became part of a 6-week Naval Intelligence
investigation into JFK’s assassination.’ He said ‘their mission was ‘Did
[Oswald] do it?’ not ‘Who did it?’ As part of their investigation, Naval
Intelligence personnel went to Dallas,
but ‘they were forbidden to have anything to do with the autopsy.’ He said,
‘The result of the Naval Intelligence investigation was that [it] concluded
Oswald was not the shooter, due to his skills, the gun, etc., [and that] Oswald
was incapable of masterminding the assassination or doing the actual shooting.’
The report’s summary was 6-7 pages, with hundreds of supporting documents.’ Our
source had ‘some knowledge that the CIA also
conducted [its] own investigation,’ a fact that wasn’t widely known when we
talked to the source in 1991.”

“Our source ‘signed a disclosure agreement’ after the
investigation, and even after almost thirty years he would convey information
only through a trusty intermediary.”

“…When we interviewed the US Navy Admiral’s son, he
independently claimed to have seen a copy of the Naval Intelligence report
while he was stationed at a large US Navy base in the Pacific in the early
1970s. His account of the report’s conclusions matched very closely those of
our Naval Intelligence source.”

“The Naval Intelligence investigation and its conclusions
make sense in light of both the tight surveillance Oswald was under before
JFK’s death and the problems many experts have documents about the shooting
skills required to assassinate JFK, and the poor quality of the
Mannlicher-Carcano found in the Book Deposiotry. As an internal Navy and Defense
Intelligence matter, t was probably important to the officials involved with
the surveillance of Oswald, and with whatever operations he participated in
after he returned from Russia,
to cover themselves with such an investigation….”

p.302:

“Indications exist that the heads of Naval and Marine
Intelligence knew more than General Carroll, but they never testified either…”

“Other crucial JFK assassination files still withheld range
from the CIA’s and FBI’s files on Harry
Williams to the operational files of the multimillion-dollar AMWORLD program,
especially those about Manual Artime’s work on the CIA-Mafia
plots. The files of other Mafia figures linked to JFK’s murder, like those of
Michael Victor Mertz and Charles Nicoletti, should also be released. Naval
Intelligence should still have a vast quantity of files about its secret JFK
investigation and FBI-assisted surveillance of Oswald…simply enforcing the 1992
JFK Act is the quickest way to make sure that the most crucial information
becomes available to the public at last.”